Parties, Orgies and Lust: Pan and Dionysus in Ancient Greece

It is therefore a God of fertility as well as male sexuality. It is represented as endowed with an immense potency and sexual appetite, hence its relationship with the orgy. According to tradition, he chased through the forests nymphs y Girls in search of their sexual favors. Like God lustful, and always a penis goat erect, dweller of rocky places, and musician; he seductively touched the syrinx, attracting the nymphs that danced naked around him, overflowing with sensuality and making fantastic orgies.

Over time the god Pán would be associated with the Satyrs, with whom he undoubtedly presents many similarities and with whom he seems to be related. The satyrs in the culture are in effect all of them “slaves of their instincts”. They share a taste for music, orgy, el wine, sex and animals".

 “He is at once an animal, shepherd and hunter fisherman, and the divinity that protects cattle and wild animals. In addition to being the patron of animal reproduction, he was undoubtedly considered a joyous god because of the influence his musical gifts instilled. He was therefore undoubtedly a festive God. However he had to be careful, at the same time it becomes terrible if it turns out that he is woken from his nap.

Local lust

Generally, hybrid beings in Greek culture do not fulfill the role of gods. Rather, they fulfill the role of intermediate beings, however Pán is an exception. He is a god in the strict sense: “immortal and an object of veneration in different regions of Greece. However, it is not entirely anthropomorphic, one of the main characteristics of the Greek gods ”.

It is interesting how this monstrous character host the lust and orgy.

This god of the lust, fields and music was originally revered by a nomadic pastoral culture. With the rise of cities and the abandonment of nomadism, their influence was initially reserved for Arcadia. It is a mountainous and marginal region, "which preserves political, linguistic and religious archaisms."

Pan is considered the most honorable of the gods in the rest of Greece. He has been considered "the spitting image of an Arcadian shepherd." Only in Arcadia do we find Pan in its purest form, free from the Dionysian influence, that is, from the god of wine and all his entourage. We must consider that Bread y DionisioThey are two independent and well differentiated characters. However, why have they been related?

From sexual god to god of war

It is from 490 BC, the status of the god changes, and it is no longer restricted to a limited sector of ancient Greece. Rather, he becomes a universal god of that culture and no longer a local one. In that year, as a result of the Athenian victory in Marathon (battle of the Greeks against the Persians) and “thanks to a panic attack among the enemy troops, Pan becomes the official deity of Athens and his cult spreads throughout the entire Hellas ”(throughout the Greek area). Pan is no longer just an arcadian divinity who safeguards herds against wild animals. He becomes a god who protects the Athenians from the barbarians ”.

It is no longer just a God of manhood, lust and music, but also a god of war, uniting all of Greece. Despite being a god of war, this lustful patron is by no means a warrior god, since he is never present on the battlefield but "is dedicated to preventing the confrontation from taking place."

Already detached from the local particularity, that "sovereign of a light muse" and of a "hybrid body that combines various natures" becomes part of the entourage of that other god of great importance mentioned above, also related to sexuality, Dionysus. This connection of Pan with the god of wine and his Dionysian cult, with its orgies y debauchery, makes the goat-footed god thus become part of the courtship of one of the most famous gods of ancient Greece.

On the luxurious Dionysian feasts

But what happened in the Dionysian festivals and what were they about?

It is relevant to underline the sacred character of parties y orgies in ancient Greece. During these festivities, the citizens traveled through the polis in a car with the image of Dionisios, the people behind followed him, singing, dancing, in a frenzied state of drunkenness. “They killed a male goat so that its blood would strengthen the earth (goblins), hence the word tragedy and from how it would be the manifestation of the chorus, derives the word comedy". 

We can find in these Dionysian orgiastic festivals the foundations of ancient Greek theater, and therefore the foundations of Western theater. Well, “when the choirs sing and others answer, we already have dialogue and it is the dithyramb, here we already find the base of the theater, people who act and people who observe. Before someone, read a story, only the character existed, now the actor represented the character ”.

Thus Dionysus is conformed as a god who incites the representation of Greek myths and tragedies, inviting a game of masks and choirs.

The very drunkenness that was induced and celebrated in these parties y orgies in ancient Greece, he tells us Nietzsche in his first great work "The birth of tragedy”, It tore the veil of the world of appearances, the world of the order of measure, and of the characteristic beauty of the god Apollo. Behind the veils of world order, the dissolution of the individual, of hierarchies and of the formality that daily life requires, under the effects of violence, was glimpsed. drunkenness and the fusion of individuals in orgies.  

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